simon hutchinson

Unfortunately, over the past couple of months I haven’t had any new recordings to post, but several of my recent projects will be realized at the beginning of December.

For those in Oregon, please check out the Oregon Composer’s Forum Concert on Thursday, December 4th, where I will conduct the premiere of “Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove” for pierrot ensemble.

And, for those in Florida, especially those who love Godzilla movies, there’s an exciting performance of new multimedia works about “Kaiju” (definition), the Kaiju Monster Invasion Concert including the premiere of my new piece “An Evening with Noriaki Yuasa” for Alto Sax and DVD.

print by MARK NAGATA

I think it’s pretty clear which show has a better flier.

Link to CD Baby

Inspired and goaded by my friends’ releases of albums on the internet, I’ve decided to put my remaining copies of my 2005 electronic music album, “den gen” up for distribution on CD Baby as well as iTunes.

If you don’t already have a copy, get one while supplies last!

Here’s a little news during this dry spell:

September last year my friend David Brusie asked me and my ex-roommate Jesse Fox to play bass and drums for his new album “Flyover State.” The problem was David was in Minnesota, Jesse was in Oregon, and I was in Japan. We recorded all our parts in separate studios and the result was this:

link to CD Baby

And I think it sounds pretty good.

As you can see, there’s nothing coming up on the calendar these days.

I’ve just moved back from Japan, and I’m back in Boston trying to get everything prepared for my move to Oregon in August. Once I’ve worked out my essentials, I’ll get down to organizing some new shows.

Here’s the clip of me from today’s broadcast of Kubota Min’yo Okunimeguri.

I can say now, since I’ve watched the video, that I was terrified that they were going to show the part of my English class where I misspelled “pomegranate” (as “pomegranite”). Luckily that was edited out though.

All in all, I think it’s a good segment (as I did with the NHK segment), but I do think that the editing they did for the song at the end is far from seamless… It’s pretty easy to spot where they have video of me doing one thing, and the audio is something else.

That’s TV for you, though.

Again, all Japanese, sorry.

High Quality (about 89Mb)

Low Quality (about 12Mb)

I came across the term, “Wabi Sabi”, while studying music in Japan this year.

In talking to the idea with various people, I often ran into the idea that “Wabi Sabi is not something that foreigners can understand.” Perhaps not, but this attitude doesn’t seem to support my goals of fostering international understanding.

So of course I foisted my ideas on my unsuspecting English class, in that in the 21st Century we enjoy incredibly quick communication that allows people all over the world to experience arts from a variety of different cultures. So while Japanese people are enjoying western pop-music, perhaps a foreigner can appreciate a Japanese aesthetic.

Regardless, I was inspired to rewrite some chorales that I composed around some haiku by Matsuo Basho (1644-1694), thinking about my studies this year in music and aesthetics as well is in the Japanese language.

I’m not sure if the pieces reflect the concept of “Wabi Sabi,” but I would challenge anyone who says that they don’t to find two people who agree on the definition of the term.

Three Haiku (score only) (formerly “Three Poems by Basho”)